


Just Another One of Your Deals

by failsafe



Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8356546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: Kate has a fight with her father and runs into someone who might be able to help. (Early Volume 1-like.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on tumblr on my birthday a couple of years ago in response to a prompt. I guess I must have asked for prompts as a birthday gift. This is supposed to be set in the original HQ they set up at the building Kate's family owned.

The sofa is long and red and the pleather is broken in a few places, showing ugly tan-yellow innards that are the color of cigarette-breath–Kate picks and picks and picks at the edges of one of the sofa’s war-wounds, wrapping a red strand around her finger over and over. 

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?” comes a voice from a blur just above her right shoulder. She knows instantly who it is and doesn’t flinch. He’s supplying a line in a script because he doesn’t know his role here yet–and she knows it and she can’t blame him. She looks back at him and wonders why he’s here in the middle of the night, but she knows. 

Wondering is a formality. 

“Go back to bed, Tommy,” she says. And then she’s not wondering anymore–it’s out there, that she knows. 

“Don’t need to,” he says, and she thinks it might be a lie. 

“I just needed to cool off.”

“Coulda stayed outside for that,” Tommy complains about the weather.

“So could–” Kate says but then cuts it off, alarmed. She wouldn’t do that. And she sees that it’s already starting to sink in, hit him like a projectile. His shoulders go down a bit and she can see in the sinew of his body that he’s about to move away. “Wait,” she orders.

He listens.

“I just… came to see what was wrong,” he reiterates and she knows it’s a kind of apology he learned somewhere else, a long way away from here. The same kind of apology she’s presently refusing to give her father, whatever the cost is. But then, maybe she doesn’t understand _cost_ the way Tommy might.

“I know. Sit down,” Kate requests.

“You’re the boss,” Tommy agrees and in another untraceable blur of motion, he’s beside her on the sofa. Not touching.

“I need to say I’m sorry for something I’m not,” Kate confides, answers Tommy’s curiosity.

“I do that a lot,” Tommy says.

Kate’s a little surprised. The way he gets along around here, she wonders what he must have been like before.

“Why?” she responds simply.

“Necessity,” he says, and again she’s a bit embarrassed by another assumption he breaks.

“Okay. Don’t… think I want to right now.”

“That’s cool.”

“Is it? Why?” Kate keeps challenging, looking over at his profile.

“Because… you can get away with it. And that’s not a bad thing.”

“Maybe it is. But he’s such…”

Tommy looks at her, inquisitive. She can tell that he’s about to ask but is holding back.

“My father,” she clarifies for him. “… He doesn’t know… _anything real_ about me.”

“Does he want to?” Tommy asks, and he leans back. His arms spread out but he doesn’t touch the back of her shoulders. He’s making himself bigger but not making her small. She kind of likes that about him.

“I don’t… I don’t think so,” she admits, shrugging.

“… Well, I do,” Tommy says just after a little sound of swallowing, hesitation in his throat. He’s very still.

Kate doesn’t say anything for a little bit. She leans forward slightly against her knees, hugging her arms. She doesn’t get up for a while.


End file.
